Affair of Honor Read Online Free PDF Page A

me even after I’d pinned you down. That takes guts, lady.”
    “Sounds more like stupidity to me,” she found herself retorting on a note of sudden laughter. “If I’d tried talking first, I might have got the whole misunderstanding straightened out before I found myself flat on my back being searched for concealed weapons! A clear instance of where reason should have prevailed.”
    “Easy to say in retrospect,” Ryder noted. “At the time, though, you were forced to make a choice on a limited amount of evidence. There wasn’t really an opportunity to try reason first and violence second. Sometimes choices like that are forced on us and we do the best we can in the circumstances. Besides, we each learned something about the other. Something it might have taken longer to learn otherwise.”
    Brenna cocked a disbelieving eyebrow. “What in the world did we learn?”
    He must have caught the challenging note in her tone because a trace of the dashing grin flashed across his face. “You found out I don’t let rash little lady cat burglars climb through my window with impunity and that I don’t resort to rape.” He ignored the wave of red in her cheeks. “I, on the other hand, learned you don’t cower when the chips are down and that you feel good under my hands.”
    “That I feel good!” Brenna repeated furiously, remembering the way his hands had stroked her body looking for weapons. The red in her cheeks darkened in anger and embarrassment. She had thought his touch almost impersonal at the time. Clearly he remembered the search procedure well! “It’s hardly gentlemanly of you to remind me of the way you held me down and went through my pockets! In fact, it wasn’t the thing to say at all if you’re actually trying to ask me out for a date tomorrow night!”
    “I’m counting on your remembering that I don’t resort to rape.” He smiled blandly. “I proved myself unthreatening last night.”
    “And that’s supposed to be a sufficient reason for me to accept your invitation?” she demanded, knowing she was half charmed and half incensed by his approach to the matter of getting a date.
    “Don’t you want to meet your landlords?” he asked coaxingly.
    “I don’t see that it’s necessary. I have strictly a business relationship with them.”
    “They’re nice people. And as I said, you owe me.”
    “You have such a persuasive technique,” she muttered dryly, knowing her sense of humor was going to get the better of her. Besides, she could certainly use the diversion of an evening out with a man who was totally different from Damon Fielding or anyone else on the philosophy faculty!
    “Did you have anything better to do tomorrow night?”
    “Not particularly,” she admitted. “Okay, I’ll go with you to meet the Gardners if you’re sure they won’t mind your turning up with a stranger in tow.”
    He finished his tea and got to his feet, looking satisfied. “They won’t. I called Sue Gardner first thing this morning and told her I was bringing you along.”
    Brenna looked up at him, remaining firmly in her chair. “Why do I have this feeling you don’t lack self-confidence? Do you always organize and manipulate things so that they go the way you want them to go?”
    “I’ve picked a way of life that allows me to live on my own terms,” he told her quietly, holding her eyes.
    A current passed between them, an electric tension that Brenna felt with overpowering awareness. The menace her senses responded to in him was back in full force.
    “But I’m not part of your life,” she heard herself say very clearly. It seemed important to tell him that. She wanted no misunderstandings on the issue. They were neighbors for the summer, nothing more. They were truly from two different worlds.
    “Do you philosophy types routinely go around denying reality and the evidence of your own senses? You entered my life last night when you came through my window. This morning I can reach out and touch